


The Quiet Rebellion of Tardigrade Sela Writings

by Edonohana



Category: LE GUIN Ursula K. - Works, The Author of the Acacia Seeds - Ursula K. Le Guin
Genre: Documentation, Don't Have to Know Canon, Gen, In-Universe Article, Metafiction, Tardigrades, Worldbuilding
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-21
Updated: 2019-12-21
Packaged: 2021-02-18 13:09:31
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,100
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21811357
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Edonohana/pseuds/Edonohana
Summary: You are no doubt familiar with the major genres of tardigrade literature.
Comments: 33
Kudos: 106
Collections: Yuletide 2019





	The Quiet Rebellion of Tardigrade Sela Writings

**Author's Note:**

  * For [lady_ragnell](https://archiveofourown.org/users/lady_ragnell/gifts).



> Tardigrades, known colloquially as water bears or moss piglets, are a phylum of water-dwelling eight-legged segmented micro-animals. They are among the most resilient animals known.
> 
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tardigrade

You are no doubt familiar with the major genres of tardigrade literature. You may have stayed up all night reading a memoir or epic, gripped by its narrative tension and vivid details of survival under the most extreme conditions. You might have found inspiration at your darkest hour in their essays celebrating courage, endurance, and tradition. Or perhaps you are drawn to the austere beauty of their poetry, with its pared-down language and vivid imagery.

Even those who have never read a single moss manuscript are aware of what is commonly believed to be their quintessential theme, that elusive virtue called _ela_. With its complex connotations of endurance, courage, discipline, and continuity in the face of change, it is most often translated as “grit” when it is translated at all, but academic writings and the better popular translations leave it as is. Like the _rrr-uff_ of lions and the [double-stamp/forward ear twitch] of okapis, it is an essential quality which is both immediately appealing and which lacks an exact counterpart in other languages. 

Books have been written on _ela,_ so I will not attempt to define it here. But even if your only exposure to tardigrade works was in your school days, struggling through early, clumsy translations of classics like _The Ice Endures and So Do I_ or _We Survived the Vacuum_ or the delightful hatchling story _Absolute Zero and Going Down_ , you will have some understanding of _ela_. Perhaps you have tried to cultivate a sense of _ela_ within yourself. 

It may surprise you to learn that not all tardigrade literature celebrates _ela_. Will it shock you to learn that there is an entire genre which explicitly defies it?

Few of these writings have been translated, and they are not easy to find. One must go farther than a quick glance at a prominent lichen to find what their authors and readers call “ _sela_ writings.” Outside of their authors and readers, these writings are neither named nor mentioned. It is unclear whether that is because they are unknown or because they are taboo.

Unlike the mainstream of tardigrade literature, _sela_ writings are typically anonymous. They are hidden rather than displayed, and will be found in dull rather than inaccessible locations, for what could be inaccessible to a tardigrade? Most significantly, these hiding places will be in the safest and least extreme areas possible. If the tardigrade colony lives in a hot spring, the comfort writings will be in the coolest, stillest part. If they live in a high-radiation zone, they will be in the area where radiation is lowest. 

But what, you must be asking yourself, is _sela_? Obviously, the prefix makes it the opposite of _ela_. But what _is_ the opposite of _ela_? This cannot be a simple answer; as _ela_ is not a simple concept, neither is _sela_. Like _ela_ , which must be grasped and felt rather than defined, so one can only get a sense of _sela_ by reading _sela_ writings.

The first _sela_ work I encountered was _Accepting the Drift_ , a poem inscribed on a floating leaf in a small pond. Tardigrade epic poetry is long and full of incident, and their non-epic poetry tends to be brief and to the point. _Accepting the Drift_ has the length of an epic, but no plot. It is a stream of consciousness in the mind of an unnamed tardigrade as they float in the warmest part of the pond, suffused with a lazy sensuality and sparkling with wit. _Accepting the Drift_ is an astonishing piece of writing, at once essentially tardigrade in its unquestioning self-sufficiency and totally unlike any tardigrade work I had ever read. 

I applied for and was lucky enough to receive a grant to study _sela_ writings, and spent a year reading all the extant translations. I spent that year in a perpetual state of amazement and delight. As a student of tardigrade literature, my encounter with _sela_ writings was like stepping into an entirely new world. 

Much _sela_ writing is difficult to categorize in terms of genre; _Accepting the Drift_ is one of many works in which it is unclear whether it is fiction, memoir, autobiographical fiction, or memoir with some details changed to protect the author’s identity. This is additionally obscured by their unknown authorship.

 _Sela_ memoirs and fiction disdain suspense, often beginning with sentences like “Obviously I survive this tale, or I would not be writing it now.” Their protagonists are typically antiheroic figures who avoid placing themselves in danger and seek out sensual pleasure even in the worst of circumstances. While the authors frequently poke fun at their own haplessness or that of their characters, they also celebrate their pursuit of comfort, pleasure, and peace as entirely worthy goals. Many _sela_ works evoke a sense of coziness and contentment comparable to cat sleep manuals or the nesting operas of robins. 

Like mainstream tardigrade writing, _sela_ works vividly depict the natural world, whether as the subject or in the background. But while most tardigrade literature presents nature as an awesome force and a worthy adversary, _sela_ literature views it as a source of sustenance, pleasure, and aesthetic beauty, and advocates—sometimes explicitly—accepting its dangers as a natural part of life. 

Here is the biggest and most shocking break with mainstream tardigrade views: _sela_ writers do not perceive death as the ultimate challenge. They submit to dehydration, freezing, or vacuum not with a fiery determination to survive, but with the equivalent of a wry shrug. “If I awake, I awake; if I do not awake, I do not awake,” concludes _The Softness of Moss_.

If this brief introduction intrigued you, do try _Accepting the Drift_ or _The Flavor of Kelp, the Soul of the Sea_ or _Distant Lichen_. These are all easily available and have excellent translations. If you have access to a therolinguistic library, you may enjoy one of my personal favorites, _I Ignore the Volcano_ , which is only available as part of a PhD thesis. It was derived from a partial manuscript written on a fragment of moss; the rest was charred beyond readability. 

Out of all the forms of courage included in _ela_ , rebellion is not one of them. Defiance of death, yes. Defiance of social conventions, no. In a society whose mainstream prides itself on toughness, it may take as much courage to compose a paen to the pleasure of warm water as it does to endure the rigors of volcano or vacuum.

My hope in writing this article is to sufficiently intrigue you to seek out _sela_ writings, and discover their quiet rebellion for yourself.


End file.
